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<font color="#0000FF">At 07:37 AM 9/7/2006, Kearney, Mike wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">On the topic of all traffic
passing the MOC (MCC or whatever)... After the ISS experience,
there is a stronger desire in the manned operations community to allow
multiple facilities to connect through the ground station to the
spacecraft. There were major constraints on operations capabilities
(especially during Hurricane Rita) that would have been alleviated if
WSGT could have been reconfigured easily to connect to a US-based backup
MCC. </font></blockquote><br>
Mike: if there had been a program requirement in place to be able to
rapidly switch to a backup control center, then wouldn't this handover
capability have been implemented and tested in the ISS operational
systems? Presumably, there wasn't such a requirement and so neither WSGT
nor MCC Houston were designed to support it. The lack of the capability
probably had nothing to do with protocols - as you note, the AOS
architecture that has been in place since 1990 was designed to easily
support such a transfer - and everything to do with programmatics and
implementation choices.<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""><font color="#0000FF">I know
that there are traditional ways to do that (AOS VCs) without placing a
router/IP gateway at the ground station. But there is a perception
in some corridors that going IP based from the ground station out gives a
needed capability to deal with contingencies, and allows low-cost
reconfigurations when ops concepts change.</font> </blockquote><br>
Isn't whether or not such a handover is done by connecting at the Link or
Network layer an absolutely trivial and insignificant level of detail and
complexity compared with the staggering amount of vehicle operational
state that has to be handed-off between the primary and backup control
centers? <br><br>
This topic seems like a red herring. Protocol geeks should be very wary
about fostering "perceptions" that this or that protocol can
solve the world's problems. There are much larger issues at play here,
and they all have to do with implementation, operational culture, cost
and risk.<br><br>
///adrian<br>
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